Smersh: Stalin's Secret Weapon: Soviet Military Counterintelligence in WWII

Home > Other > Smersh: Stalin's Secret Weapon: Soviet Military Counterintelligence in WWII > Page 50
Smersh: Stalin's Secret Weapon: Soviet Military Counterintelligence in WWII Page 50

by Vadim Birstein


  12. The Secret War Report of the OSS, edited by Anthony Cave Brown, 286 (New York: Berkley Publishing Corporation, 1976).

  13. Hazard, Cold War Crubicle, 60.

  14. An interview with Lawrence Houston, cited in ibid., 196, and a speech by Allen Dulles on May 4, 1959, quoted in Richard Harris Smith, The OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972), 118.

  15. On SOE operations in Romania see Alan Ogden, Through Hitler’s Back Door: SOE Operations in Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria 1939–1945 (Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Military, 2010), 197–263.

  16. Bradley F. Smith, Sharing Secrets with Stalin: How the Allies Traded Intelligence, 1941–1945 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1996), 20–26; Martin Kitchen, ‘SOE’s Man in Moscow,’ Intelligence and National Security 12, No. 3 (July 1997), 95–109.

  17. Smith, Sharing Secrets with Stalin, 254.

  18. Quoted (page 395) in B. D. Yurinov, “Ternistyi put’ sotrudnichestva,” in Ocherki istorii rossiiskoi vneshnei razvedki. T. 4. 1941–1945 gody (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1999), 385–98 (in Russian).

  19. Testimony of Max Braun on September 10, 1947. Page 324 in Document No. 43 in Generaly i ofitsery Vermakhta, 217–20.

  20. The Romanians handed over several members of the mission, including Colonel Hans Schwickert, to the NKVD—not SMERSH—operatives. Yevgenii Zhirnov, ‘Prints skryl svoyu nastoyashchiuiu familiyu,’ Kommersant-Vlast’, no. 14 (668), April 10, 2006 (in Russian), http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=664971, retrieved September 8, 2011.

  21. Stavka’s directive No. 220218, dated September 17, 1944. Document No. 24 in Russkii Arkhiv. Velikaya Otechestvennaya 14, no. 3 (2), 107–8 (in Russian).

  22. Interrogation of Max Braun, dated September 10, 1947. Page 220 in Document No. 43 in Generaly i ofitsery Vermakhta rasskazyvayut.

  23. Marie Vassilchikov, Berlin Diaries, 1941–1945 (New York: Vintage Books, 1988), 25–27, 46, 54, 82–88, 95, 150, and Giles MacDonogh, A Good German: Adam von Trott zu Solz (Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1992), 26, 97, 127, 164, 168, 170, 182, 215, 283.

  24. Kurt Welkisch and his wife Margarita (alias LZL) belonged to the Alta group that also included Ilse Stebe, Gerhard Kegel, and Rudolf von Scheliha (alias Ariets). Details in Vladimir Lota, ‘Alta’ protiv ‘Barbarossa’ (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 2004) (in Russian).

  25. In 2001, recollections of Gerhard Stelzer translated into Romanian were published: Rolf Pusch and Gerhard Steltzer, Diplomati Germani la Bucuresti, 1937–1944 (Bucharest: Editura All Educational, 2001).

  26. Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab, 359.

  27. Report of Malinovsky and Susaikov, dated September 2, 1944, Document No. 29 in Russkii arkhiv. Velikaya Otechestvennaya. Krasnaya Armiya v stranah tsentral’noi, severnoi Evropy i na Balkanakh’ 1944–1945. Dokumenty i materialy, T. 14 (3–2) (Moscow: Terra, 2000), 38–39 (in Russian).

  28. Boris Syromyatnikov, ‘Sorok shest’ chasov s rumynskim diktatorom,’ Voenno-promyshlennyi kur’er, No. 40 (October 17–23, 2007) (in Russian). Also, a photo of the first page of Abakumov’s report No. 753/A to Beria, dated June 1945, in SMERSH. Istoricheskie ocherki, 90.

  29. Transcripts of interrogations in the Romanian File, RG–05.025, US Holocaust Memorial Museum (a photocopy of the File H–19767, three volumes, kept in the FSB Central Archive in Moscow).

  30. Page 146 in ibid.

  31. Details in Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944 (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 2000).

  32. Page 526 in the File H–19767 and Hugh Seton-Watson, The East European Revolution (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1951), 205.

  33. ‘Razboiul anti-URSS a fost legitim,’ Ziua, 20 February 2007 (in Romanian).

  34. During WWI, Baron Sergei N. Delvig (1866–1944?) commanded an artillery unit. From 1917–20, he served in the Ukrainian Army. In 1920, Delvig emigrated to Romania.

  35. Abakumov’s report to Beria No. 606/A, dated November 22, 1944. A photo of the report in SMERSH. Istoricheskie ocherki, 142.

  36. Cited in Dmitri Volkogonov, Triumf i tragedia. Politicheskii portret I. V. Stalina. Kniga 2 (Moscow: Agenstvo pechati Novosti, 1989), 24 (in Russian). This cable was not included in the English version of Volkogonov’s book.

  37. Unto Parvilahti, Beria’s Gardens: Ten Years’ Captivity in Russia and Siberia, translated from the Finnish by Alan Blair (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1959), 54.

  38. Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab, 360.

  39. The awarded Soviet military leaders: I. S. Stalin (twice), A. M. Vasilevsky (twice), G. K. Zhukov (twice), A. I. Antonov, L. A. Govorov, I. S. Konev, R. Ya. Malinovsky, K. A. Meretskov, K. K. Rokossovsky, S. K. Timoshenko, and F. I. Tolbukhin. Additionally, on February 20, 1978, Leonid Brezhnev received this award; however, on September 21, 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev abolished the decision to award Brezhnev.

  40. The awarded foreigners: US Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower (June 5, 1945), British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (June 5, 1945), King Mihai I (July 6, 1945), Polish Marshal Mihał Rola-Żymierski (August 9, 1945), and Yugoslavian Marshal Josip Broz Tito (September 9, 1945).

  41. Cited in Craig S. Smith. ‘Romania’s King Without a Throne Outlives Foes and Setbacks,’ The New York Times, January 27, 2007.

  42. Robert Lee Wolff, The Balkans in Our Time (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 242–8.

  43. Michael Bar-Zohar, Beyond Hitler’s Grasp: The Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria’s Jews (Holbrook, MA: Adams Media Company, 1998), 46–48.

  44. Vojtech Mastny, Russia’s Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism, 1941–1945 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 202–3.

  45. Details in Yelena Valeva, ‘Politicheskie protsessy v Bolgarii, 1944–1948 gg.,’ ‘Karta,’ no. 36-37 (2003), 48-59 (in Russian), http://www.hro.org/node/10845, retrieved September 8, 2011.

  46. In September 1944, the Communist authorities liquidated about 18,000 arrestees without trial. Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskikh arkhivov, 1944–1953 gg. Tom 1. 1944–1948 gg., edited by T. V. Volokitina et al., 150–1 (Moscow: Sibirskii khronograf, 1997) (in Russian).

  47. Document Nos. 28 and 30, in Vostochnaya Evropa, 101, 104–5.

  48. Bogdana Lazorova, ‘Cherveniyat teror 1944–1949 g.,’ DARIK News, May 6, 2006 (in Bulgarian), http://www.dariknews.bg/view_article.php?article_ id=63793, retrieved September 8, 2011. Overall, from December 20, 1944 until the end of April 1945, the Bulgarian people’s courts tried 11,122 political defendants, and of these, 2,730 were sentenced to death, 1,305 were convicted to life imprisonment, and the rest, to various terms of imprisonment.

  49. Nadezhda and Maiya Ulanovskie, Istoriya sem’i (New York: Chalidze Publications, 1982), 212 (in Russian).

  50. Report by Claudio de Mohr, former Italian Cultural Counselor, in Agne Hamrin, ‘Ånnu en Moskgafänge vittnar om Wallenberg: Svenskarna kränktes om skyddsuppdrag,’ Dagens Nyheter, September 1, 1953. Also, a statement by Adolf Heinz Beckerle, former German Minister to Sofia, to the Swedish authorities, dated April 15, 1957. I am grateful to Susanne Berger for these references.

  51. Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab, 375–6.

  52. The Secret War Report of the OSS, edited by Anthony Cave Brown, 290–1 (New York: Berkley Publishing Corporation, 1976) 1.

  53. Vladimir Antonov, ‘Syn protiv otsa,’ Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, September 16, 2005 (in Russian), http://nvo.ng.ru/spforces/2005-09-16/7_syn.html, retrieved September 8, 2011.

  54. V. G. Chicheryukin-Meingardt, Drozdovtsy posle Gallipoli (Moscow: Reittar, 2002), 66–79 (in Russian).

  55. A. V. Okorokov, Russkaya emigratsiya. Politicheskie, voenno-politicheskie i voinskie organizatsii, 1920–1990 gg. (Moscow: Azuar Consulting, 2003), 81–82 (in Russian).

  56. Vadim Abramov, SMERSH. Sovetskaya voennaya razvedka protiv razvedki Tret’ego Reikha (Moscow: Yauza-E
ksmo, 2005), 213 (in Russian).

  57. Details in Stanislav J. Kirschbaum, History of Slovakia: The Struggle for Survival (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 205–25.

  58. Vladimir Lota, Informatory Stalina. Neizvestnye operatsii sovetskoi voennoi razvedki. 1944–1945 (Moscow: Tsetrpolitgraf, 2009), 216-27 (in Russian).

  59. On SOE involvement in the Uprising, see Ogden, Through Hitler’s Back Door, 62–84.

  60. Report about Šmidke’s mission to Stalin, dated August 10, 1944, and a Russian translation of Čatloš’s letter to the Soviet leaders. Document No. 1 in Russkii Arkhiv. Velikaya Otechestvennaya, 14 (3–2), 478–82.

  61. Details in Ján Stanislav, ‘Mocnosti protifašisickej koalície a ozbrojený zápas v SNP,’ in Humanisické tradície v literárnom odkaze Slovenskeho národého povstania (Banská Bystrica, Slovakia: Štátna vedecká knižnica, 2004), 18–42 (in Slovakian), http://www.snp.sk/docs/zbornik.pdf, retrieved September 8, 2011.

  62. Jan Loyda’s letter to the commandant of Vladimir Prison, dated January 28, 1953, from his personal file (page 78). A copy in the Riksarkivet Utrikesdepartementet (RA UD, Archive of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs), Stockholm.

  63. On January 8, 1947, representatives of the 3rd MGB Main Directorate handed Čatloš in Prague over to the Czechoslovak authorities. From Čatloš’s prisoner card at the Military Archive in Moscow.

  64. ‘Jozef Turanec’ (in Czech), http://forum.valka.cz/viewtopic.php/p/186621#186621, retrieved September 8, 2011.

  65. Peter B. Vlčko and Ryan P. Vlčko, ‘The Soviet Union’s Role in the Slovak National Uprising. The Talsky Affair: Incompetent, Traitor or Pawn?’ (2005), 34, http://sitemaker.umich.edu/ryanvlcko/files/soviet_role_in_the_slovak_national_ uprising__snp_.pdf, retrieved September 8, 2011.

  66. Parvilahti, Beria’s Gardens, 75.

  67. On the NSNP see Boris Pryanishnikov, Novopokolentsy (Silver Spring, MD: Multilingual Typesetting, 1986) (in Russian).

  68. Aleksandr Kolpakidi, Likvidatory KGB. Spetsoperatsii soverskikh spetssluzhb, 1941–2004 (Moscow: Yauza-Eksmo, 2004), 286 (in Russian).

  69. Shulgin published a series of memoirs in Russian, but only one was translated into English: V. V. Shulgin, The Years: Memoirs of a Member of the Russian Duma, 1906–1917, translated by Tanya Davis (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1984).

  70. See SMERSH’s documents on Shulgin’s arrest in Tyuremnaya odisseya Vasiliya Shulgina. Materialy sledstvennogo dela i dela zaklyuchennogo, edited by V. G. Makarov, A. V. Epnikov, and V. S. Khristoforov, 135–42 (Moscow: Knizhnitsa, 2010) (in Russian).

  71. Details in A. Kolpakidi and D. Prokhorov, KGB: Prikazano likvidirovat’. Spetsoperatsii sovetskikh spetssluzhb 1918–1941 (Moscow: Yauza, 2004), 215–28 (in Russian).

  72. Boris Koverda (1907–1987), a Russian emigrant, targeted Pyotr Voikov (1888–1927) for assassination because in 1917, Voikov participated in the decision to liquidate Nicholas II and his family. The Polish Extraordinary Court sentenced Koverda to life in prison, but in 1937 he was amnestied. After WWII, Koverda emigrated to the United States, where he lived and died near Washington, DC.

  73. A photo of Abakumov’s report No. 759/A dated June 1945. SMERSH, 90.

  74. Yu. B. Mordvinov, Belogvardeitsy. Avtobiograficheskaya povest’ (2001), 95–109 (in Russian).

  75. Pavel Kutepov was released in 1954. He was not permitted to live in Moscow and settled down in the city of Ivanovo. In 1960, he was hired by the Moscow Patriarchate as a translator and moved to Moscow. In 1967, Kutepov was promoted to head of the Translation Bureau of the Foreign Affairs Church Department of the Moscow Patriarchate. He died in 1983. Shulgin was released on September 14, 1956, but he was allowed to live only in Vladimir. His wife came from abroad to join him. He died on February 15, 1976 and was rehabilitated on November 12, 2001.

  76. A photo of the first page of Abakumov’s report to Beria No. 684/A dated March 1945, SMERSH. Istoricheskie ocherki, 150.

  77. Memoirs by Yevgenii Popov, former RU translator, cited in Vladimir Lota, Informatory Stalina. Neizvestnye operatsii sovetskoi voennoi razvedki. 1944–1945 (Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2009), 317–20 (in Russian).

  78. Atzel’s statement to the officers of the Political Directorate of the 46th Army, dated November 27, 1944. Document No. 33 in Russkii Arkhiv. Velikaya Otechestvennaya, 14 (3–2), 331–5.

  79. On van der Waals’s story in Budapest see Karoly Kapronczay, Refugees in Hungary: Shelters from Storm During World War II, translated by Eva Barcza-Bessenyey (Toronto: Matthias Corvinus Publishing, 1999), 198–203; on SOE in Hungary see Ogden Through Hitler’s Back Door, 23–61, 90–93.

  80. Report by Folke Persson, Swedish Consul in New York, to the Swedish Foreign Ministry about a conversation with Karl Schandl, dated February 7, 1958. In Raoul Wallenberg—A Collection of Documents (Stockholm: Utrikesdepartement), Vol. 42 (the collection does not include a year of publication or page numbers).

  81. Sinevirsky, SMERSH, 183.

  82. Report of Major Petrovsky, assistant head of the 2nd Department, UKR SMERSH, 2nd Ukrainian Front, dated January 23, 1945. Raoul Wallenberg’s Document Database (RWDD), Riksarkivet Utrikesdepartementet (RA UD, Archive of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs), Stockholm.

  83. On Raoul Wallenberg’s background and his work in Budapest, see Jenö Lėvai, Raoul Wallenberg: His Remarkable Life, Heroic Battles and the Secret of His Mysterious Disappearance, translated into English by Frank Vajda (Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 1989) and Paul A. Levine, Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest: Myth, History and Holocaust (London: Valentine Mitchell, 2010).

  84. T. Kushner, ‘Rules of the Game: Britain, America and the Holocaust in 1944,’ Holocaust and Genocide Studies 5, no. 4 (1990), 381–402.

  85. Document Nos. 18 and 74 in Dokumenty vneshnei politiki. 1940–22 iyunya 1941, Tom 23, Kniga 1 (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1998) (in Russian), and Document No. 804 in ibid., Tom 23, Kniga 2 (2) (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1998), 634–6 (in Russian).

  86. Copies of military reports and orders regarding Raoul Wallenberg and Jan Spišjak, Max Meier and Harald Feller (RWDD, RA UD, Stockholm).

  87. Cable to Commander of the 30th Rifle Corps, dated January 14, 1945 (RWDD, RA UD, Stockholm).

  88. Ibid.

  89. Zakharov’s cable No. 987 to Bulganin (RWDD, RA UD, Stockholm).

  90. Bulganin’s order to Zakharov and Abakumov (cable No. 5533/sh), dated January 17, 1945 (RWDD, RA UD, Stockholm).

  91. Wallenberg’s prisoner card from the FSB Central Archive (RWDD, RA UD, Stockholm).

  92. Note to Lt. Colonel Ryndin, head of the Operational Group of the 2nd Ukrainian Front in Budapest, dated January 22, 1945 (RWDD, RA UD, Stockholm).

  93. Zakharov’s cable No. 1619 to Bulganin, dated January 25, 1945 (RWDD, RA UD, Stockholm).

  94. Special Annex to Bulletin No. XXXII (1945), 8. Courtesy by Lovice Maria Ullein-Reviczky, Antal Ullein-Reviczky Foundation (Hungary).

  95. Bulganin’s cable to Zakharov No. 1367/sh, dated January 27, 1945 (RWDD, RA UD, Stockholm).

  96. Information released by the Russian participants of the Swedish-Russian Working Group on Raoul Wallenberg on April 14–15, 1993.

  97. Nicholas Nyaradi, My Ringside Seat in Moscow (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1952), 221.

  98. Details in Krisztián Ungváry, The Siege of Budapest: One Hundred Days in World War II, translated from the Hungarian by Ladislaus Löb (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 339–63;

  99. Nyaradi, My Ringside Seat, 222. An analysis of atrocities in James Mark, ‘Remembering Rape: Divided Social Memory and the Red Army in Hungary 1944–1945,’ Past and Present, no. 188 (August 2005), 133–61.

  100. Report of the Swiss Legation in Budapest in the spring of 1945. Appendix III in John Flournoy Montgomery, Hungary—The Unwilling Satellite (New York: Devin-Adair Co., 1947), http://www.hungarianhistory.com/lib/montgo/montgo21.htm, retrieved September 8, 2011.

  101. Letter of Mikhail Vetrov to Vladimir Dekanozov, dated
May 24, 1945 (RWDD, RA UD, Stockholm).

  102. Special Annex to Bulletin No. XXXII (1945), 8.

  103. SMERSH. Istoricheskie ocherki, 159.

  104. Cable to ‘Director’ (Ivan Il’ichev, head of the GRU), dated March 2, 1943, quoted in Shandor Rado, Pod psevdonimom Dora (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1973), 203–4 (in Russian).

  105. Quoted in Ignác Romsics, István Bethlen: A Great Conservative Statesman of Hungary, 1974-1946 (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 1995), 385.

  106. A report by G. S. Zhukov to the Central Committee, dated April 17, 1944. Document No. 5 in Sovetskii factor v Vostochnoi Evrope. 1944–1963. Tom 1. 1944–1948. Dokumenty, edited by T. V. Volokitina, G. P. Murashko, and A. F. Noskova (Moscow: Rosspen, 1999), 56–58 (in Russian).

  107. See Wlodzimierz Borodziej, The Warsaw Uprising of 1944, translated by Barbara Harshow (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006).

  108. Directive of the HQ of the NKVD rear guard troops of the 3rd Belorussian Front, dated August 25, 1944. Quoted on page 198 in P. A. Aptekar’, ‘Vnutrennie voiska NKVD protiv pol’skogo podpol’ya (Po dokumentam Rossiiskogo gosudarstvennogo voennogo arkhiva),’ in Repressii protiv polyakov i pol’skikh grazhdan, edited by A. E. Gur’yanov (Moscow: Zven’ya, 1997), 197–206 (in Russian).

  109. Stavka’s directive, dated August 2, 1944. Document No. 9, Chapter 4 in Russkii Arkhiv. Velikaya otechestvennaya. SSSR i Pol’sha: 1941–1945. K istorii voennogo soyuza. Dokumenty i materialy, T. 14 (3–1), edited by V. A. Zolotarev, 334–35 (Moscow: TERRA, 1994) (in Russian).

  110. GKO Order on Poland, dated July 31, 1944. Quoted in NKVD i pol’skoe podpol’e (Po ‘Osobym papkam’ I. V. Stalina), edited by A. F. Noskova, 12 (Moscow: Institut slavyanovedeniya, 1994) (in Russian).

  111. Nikita Petrov, Pervyi predsedatel’ KGB Ivan Serov (Moscow: Materik, 2005), 21–31 (in Russian).

  112. Serov’s report to Beria, dated October 16, 1944. Forwarded to Stalin and Molotov. Document No. 5 in NKVD i pol’skoe podpol’e, 37–42.

  113. An excerpt cited as a note to Document No. 5 in ibid., 38.

  114. Serov’s report to Beria, dated October 26, 1946. Document No. 9 in NKVD i pol’skoe podpol’e, 55–58.

 

‹ Prev